Product description

with a new foreword by Neil Postman When communications thinker Marshall McLuhan gave us the phrases "the medium is the message" and "global village," he was ahead of his time. Now, in the age of the digital revolution McLuhan and his work cannot be ignored by any student of culture and technology. Interest in McLuhan has increased dramatically since this biography was first published in 1989 to stunning reviews. The author has extensively revised this new edition to include additional information provided by McLuhan's family and friends, and to present an even clearer and more absorbing personal picture of McLuhan. The book explains the relevance to today's society of a man who reached the height of his fame in the 1960s. The foreword by Neil Postman is original to this edition.* Not for sale in Canada

Review quote

"The best--I might say the only good--precis of McLuhan's thought Ihave ever read." Los Angeles Times Book Review "Beautifully written... brings instant recognition of that weird,exhilarating vortex of ideas that McLuhan meant to us..." Globe and Mail

Editorial reviews

Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian academic who became a media celebrity during the counter-culture 1960s by coining such phrases as 'the global village' and 'the medium is the message'. Through his pioneering work in media studies he gave us a way of seeing how new media, from television to the Internet, change the way we perceive the world. However, the question that still remains to be answered is whether he was a guru or a charlatan. In this very readable biography Marchand suggests that he may in fact have been both. We see the discontented young English lecturer in minor colleges clashing with his colleagues and seeking desperately some high-profile way of getting out. We also see the charismatic lecturer who infuriated and enthused his students in more-or-less equal measure. The first interdisciplinary study he put together was specifically designed to grab a large grant, and actually displayed an inability for the different disciplines to work together. At the same time it electrified the academic world with some of the ideas that came out of the seminars, and paved the way for the ideas that would come later and would define our relationship with the new electronic world. (Kirkus UK)

Back cover copy

Some considered him the oracle of the electric age; others dismissed him as a charlatan. But many of his predictions are coming true with eerie accuracy. It's impossible to ignore such McLuhan phrases as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" as we surf the 'Net or pop a cassette into the VCR. His genius was in foreseeing such cultural upheavals - it is uncanny the impact his studies have had on the way we view the world. This fully revised and updated edition of the award-winning biographical classic traces the evolution of McLuhan's theories and is the key to understanding this enigmatic media guru.